


Let Me Sacrifice

by HiKaRanko



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Demisexuality, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Keith/Lance (Voltron), No Plot/Plotless, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Unrequited Crush, plangst, what's a happy ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 09:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14808761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiKaRanko/pseuds/HiKaRanko
Summary: She just didn't want him to die.





	Let Me Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a hopeless multishipper, but I do love Plance/Pidgance/Flirtyrobot/Rainforest whatever it's called a lot a lot and I had to reconcile that with my need for angst somehow. So. This is what happened. :D

The world came rushing back with a great whooshing sound, as the forcefield in front of her dropped and allowed air inside the vacuous space. Pidge automatically drew in a deep breath, letting it all fill her lungs as her eyes fluttered halfway open. She could see blurry figures gathered in front of her, all of whom gradually became clearer in her vision as she blinked around rapidly at each of them. Her teammates all appeared to be in various stages of relief, some of them even smiling in her direction. For a brief moment, Pidge wasn’t sure what was going on.

Then her memory snapped into place. The sharp pain in her chest and head were suddenly absent; one hand moved up to press fingers against where there should have been a large wound only to find nothing of the sort. Pidge’s eyes grew wide, suddenly on high alert, and she immediately started to pull herself out of the healing pod as quickly as she could. Her feet were practically jelly beneath her weight and she swayed dangerously in place. Someone - she couldn’t be sure who at that point - hurried to try and steady her, but she was quick to slap their hands away.

And so the first thing Pidge did, after stumbling out of the healing pod and finding her feet, was start to yell.

“Why did you go back?!” Pidge yelled, whirling on Lance who could only blink back, wide-eyed in alarm. “I told you to leave me and get to the others!”

The entire group seemed to freeze, understandably confused and alarmed by the outburst. Hunk and Allura exchanged wide-eyed glances. Keith moved away from the other Blade of Marmora members that had come along to stand at Shiro’s side. Lance’s mouth simply dropped open in utter bewilderment. Pidge’s face went hot; He looked as if he didn’t know what he’d done. But he did. Pidge _knew_ he did.

“Wait what?” Hunk sounded genuinely concerned,  “What’re you talking about?”

“I _told_ him to get you guys as back up,” Pidge answered sternly, glancing over at Hunk for a moment. “I’m guessing he didn’t and ended up blowing the whole mission!”

At that Lance frowned, eyes narrowing. “Uh, _hello_ ?? I saved you from _dying_ , Pidge! You really thought I’d just leave you out there?”

Pidge wasn’t having it, her attention back on the taller paladin as she pointed an accusing finger at his face. “I was buying your sorry ass some time to get back to the others and you _wasted_ it! You could’ve gotten yourself killed too, and _then_ where would we all be?!”

“But I _didn’t_ and look at that, we’re both alive, so you’re quiznaking welcome!!”

“I’m not thanking you for doing exactly what I told you not to!”

Lance looked affronted, gesturing wildly with his hands as he argued back. “I! Saved! Your! Life!”

“I! Never! Asked you to!!”

“Wha-- You ungrateful little gremlin--!!”

“ _That’s enough_ ,” Shiro interjected loudly, stepping forward into the space between them. He looked from Pidge to Lance and back again, his brows furrowed together and a frown on his lips. “Both of you need to calm down. Lance, give her a minute to breathe here.”

Lance threw his arms up in the air in a gesture of surrender, just before looking over to Hunk with a look of frustration on his face. “Geez, can you _believe_ her?!”

Pidge’s face burned again. He hadn’t even bothered to lower his voice as he made the comment.

Shiro frowned in Lance’s direction, but then turned back toward Pidge with a softer, but no less stern look on his face. “And Pidge, I believe that Lance made the right call. You know we can’t afford to lose you.”

“But he ruined the whole thing!” she argued, now turning her frustration onto Shiro. “We’re never going to get another shot at this! Us going down there was totally pointless now!”

“That’s not how I see it,” Shiro replied with a frown. “He kept you from being captured or killed. We may not have been able to finish the job, but it’s better than losing a Paladin.”

She just snorted at that, folding her arms over her chest and looking off to the side with a scowl. She could still see Lance frowning in her general direction. “Whatever. Paladins can be replaced. I wouldn’t have been missed.”

The words were never meant for the others to hear; she’d been so sure she was muttering angrily under her breath. But maybe she was still a little thrown off, having just emerged from the healing pod and all, because the remark reached everyone’s ears. And it ended with them all staring at her in abject horror.

It was Allura who spoke first, from behind a hand that had come up to cover her mouth. “Pidge- How could you say such a thing?”

Pidge’s face went hotter than ever, her eyes suddenly stinging, her teeth digging hard enough into her lower lip to make it bleed.

“Pidge, what the _hell_ .” That was Keith, sharp-tongued and short-tempered as ever. Though maybe this time it was a fair reaction. “What the _hell_?!?!”

“You know we could never replace you!” Hunk cried out, a note of desperation in his voice. He kept looking to the other paladins for support, expecting further outcry from them all. “Without you we’d be totally lost out here! I mean not _literally_ , but--”

“You’d be _fine_ ,” Pidge barked back, cutting him off before he could go on a tangent. “It’s not like we’ve never had to pick a new pilot for one of the lions before.”

There went Pidge’s mouth, running off on its own out of her own frustration. The collective gasp that remark caused actually stung. She bit her lip again, staring hard at the ground in front of her so that she wouldn’t be able to see Shiro out of the corner of her eye.

Hunk choked on air. “That was different! Totally, completely, way way _way_ different!”

“It wouldn’t have been.” Damn. She’d opened her mouth again and logic came spilling out. Cold, hard, emotionless facts. “If a soldier is killed during war, you just get another soldier. I’m not the only person who’s ever piloted Green, it’d take time but you’d find someone-”

“No we couldn’t!” Hunk’s voice was oddly shrill with panic and disbelief, gesturing wildly with his arms. “We wouldn’t even _want_ to!!”

“I’m just saying that we would have gained more if Lance had just done what I told him to!”

“We don’t trade lives here,” Shiro countered, his tone hardening with authority. “I would never ask any of you to make that call.”

“You weren’t there,” Pidge snapped, shutting her eyes to fight off a sudden wave of dizziness. If her response threw Shiro for even a moment, she didn’t see it.

“We were literally not that far from you!” Keith cried out, throwing himself into the verbal fray. “You could’ve called us in for emergency evac, we would’ve been there in minutes-”

She shook her head, turning a fresh glare on Keith. “We didn’t _have_ minutes! I thought _you_ of all people would understand where my priorities were!”

Keith’s expression twisted ever so slightly. Pidge could only assume he felt the same rush of shame that she did at the outburst.

“Pidge, _please_.” Allura’s voice somehow seemed the most calm of everyone there. “Just think about what you’re telling us...”

“Look, we had a hard choice to make and Lance wasn’t doing anything so I called it and he couldn’t even get running for back up right!!”

“Stop talking about it like that!” Lance snapped, loud enough to drown her out. “You’re alive, okay?! Why can’t you just appreciate-”

“My life isn’t worth the risk of losing this war! You should’ve let me die out there and got the job done!”

Before anyone could say anything in response, Pidge turned on her heel and quickly made her way to the exit, despite the wobbliness she could still feel in her knees. Someone was calling after her - it might’ve been Hunk or maybe Allura, she couldn’t tell over the roaring in her ears - but she didn’t stop to be sure. She didn’t stop at all. In moments her feet were hitting the ground more firmly, and she pushed onward into a full on sprint toward the Green Lion’s hangar.

Normally that would’ve been her hiding place. She’d crawl into Green’s cockpit and lock the others out, let herself be consoled by the lion’s presence in her mind and the low rumble of understanding the old girl offered her. This was not a normal circumstance. Her feet carried her there automatically, but as she drew closer Pidge felt like she didn’t deserve to hide with Green. She’d been ready to lose her life, which would’ve meant letting Green lose her paladin, so she felt sure that the lion might take a similar stance on the matter as the others. So no, she couldn’t hide with Green.

She found an old, spare exosuit in the hangar and climbed out of an airlock instead. There was a cord that kept her connected to the castle, so she was safe. But she’d needed to be outside. To just look out at the endlessness of space. To remind herself that in the middle of this vast universe, she was little more than a piece of cosmic dust. Tiny. Insignificant.

But she kept seeing Lance in her mind. The look on his face when she’d told him to leave her. The anger in his eyes while they argued. The way he smiled and nudged her playfully whenever they tossed puns around. The groan he made whenever she and Hunk talked about something that went over his head.

The way he looked at Keith when he thought no one would notice.

“God.” Something in her chest ached, making Pidge swear under her breath while she pulled a knee up to her chest. “Why did it have to be _Lance_?”

She hadn’t asked for this. She _still_ didn’t want it. If she could take back the moment she realized that she found Lance attractive, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Crushes were rare for her, after all. It was all Lance’s stupid fault anyway; Pidge had been hoping to find herself a wonderful piece of tech and spend the rest of her life happily researching its intricacies, and then suddenly Lance’s stupid face had split into a warm, genuine smile and crushed her dreams.

How dare he.

It all made her feel so stupid, and she hated that. For reasons even she couldn’t fathom, she always found herself drawn to the tall Cuban boy. She kept paying more attention to him than she should, always more aware of where he was and what he was doing than she was of anyone else on her team. Pidge considered everyone on the team to be her best friends, so she wanted to chalk it up to just that, but deep down she knew better. Deep down she knew that she cared about Lance a lot more than she should.

She’d told him to leave her and get help from the others. She’d told him that because she knew it would be too much to spend her last moments thinking that they were going to die together. Books always talked about how that was a romantic notion. Pidge disagreed. And besides, it wasn’t even like her feelings were reciprocated. Maybe _that_ would’ve been something.

Pidge groaned, burying her head into the crook of her elbows, shutting her eyes. Shiro was right. She needed to calm down. She should be grateful that Lance went back for her, saved her, even if it meant that they ultimately blew the mission.

It would’ve been so much easier if he hadn’t, though. Then she wouldn’t have to keep going around dealing with these stupid _feelings_.

Feelings for a boy that wanted somebody else.

_Why did it have to be Lance_.

  


“Pidge.”

The sound of Shiro’s voice made Pidge look up, glancing around her until her gaze finally settled on the team leader, dressed in full armor and hovering uncertainly by the airlock. He looked concerned, his eyebrows again knitted together as he looked at her with soft eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

The green paladin looked away with a quick shake of her head, fumbling with her suit to turn the comm on. “N-Nothing.” When she heard herself, she realized that her voice sounded raspy and broken. Her throat felt scratchy and raw. _Damn_. “I’m fine.”

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Shiro moving closer, approaching as carefully as he could in zero gravity. “You know that phrase doesn’t work on me.”

There’s a slight, self-deprecating chuckle in there that’s clearly an attempt to get Pidge to laugh as well. She can tell. And normally she would at least be smiling, because Shiro was the undisputed king of saying I’m Fine in order to get out of talking about something that bothered him. Idly, she wondered if he felt weird about the tables being turned on him like this.

“Talk to me, Pidge,” he said again, his voice low and soothing, trying to coax her into a comfort zone. “I know something must be going on.”

Pidge shook her head again, clearing her throat with the hope that her voice won’t sound as bad this time. She had to turn away, too, looking back out toward the stars. “I’m just feeling a little banged up still, I guess. Emotional and stuff. I’ll be okay.”

Shiro didn’t respond to that. Pidge tried for a small, awkward laugh. It sounded forced, even to her.

“I never knew spending so much time in the healing pod could mess me up so badly. Who knew, right?”

Again, he didn’t say anything. Probably because out of everyone on their team, Shiro knew the inside of a healing pod the best. Emotional disorientation was not a normal side effect.

“You’ve been out here for an hour, Pidge.” His voice was just as even and calm as before, nothing accusatory in his tone at all. It was probably some attempt to soothe her nerves. But the words themselves made Pidge flinch, fingers curling and gripping into the fabric of the exosuit. “And you sound like you’ve been crying.”

Suddenly there was a vice in Pidge’s chest and it was tightening around her. She bit down on her lip, gaze falling slightly. She couldn’t bring herself to answer that. She hadn’t been crying. Not really. She’d been screaming into the void, letting the sound bounce around the inside of her suit with no way out, rattling herself to the core.

“Pidge, please… Talk to me.” Shiro laid a hand on her shoulder, his fingers squeezing ever so slightly. “I just want to help.”

Her lip was going to bleed. It was absolutely going to bleed from how hard she was biting it.

“And… you should stop doing that.”

She immediately released her lip, but she still didn’t turn to face Shiro. She stayed silent for a moment longer, focusing on some distant star that they would probably never visit. Shiro’s patience shouldn’t have been surprising; it was a virtue that he always insisted the rest of the team practice. Pidge definitely wasn’t good at being patient, and she’d displayed that pretty clearly when their mission fell apart earlier.

If Pidge was being honest with herself, she’d hoped to end up waiting out Shiro. She thought for sure that someone would call him back inside and he’d have to excuse himself away, But half an hour had passed and he was still there. At one point the soft white noise coming through their comms went dead, only to return a moment later. Pidge assumed that had been Shiro contacting the others to let them know they were okay. Fair enough. She knew for a fact that Hunk - and probably Coran - would’ve been going out of his mind with worry to see that they’d both vanished.

Eventually, Pidge caved. Shiro wasn’t Matt or her father, but he was still family to her. And he was the least likely of the team to tease or question. If she had to tell someone about the thoughts that roiled around in her gut, Shiro was a pretty damn good choice.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, so softly that for a moment she worried that he wouldn’t hear her.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Shiro shift, bringing himself just the tiniest bit closer to wordlessly assure her that he was there and listening.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, a little louder as she pulled her knees in even closer with a sigh. “I… pushed everyone away again, didn’t I.”

Shiro’s hand fell onto her shoulder again. “It’s okay. We’re still here for you. You can’t get rid of us that easily.”

Pidge drew in a shaky breath and nodded slowly, still carefully keeping her gaze fixed on that distant star.

“I know this is hard for you,” Shiro went on. She could tell that he was carefully choosing his words, weighing out his options before speaking. “For all of you. Being ‘defenders of the universe’ is a big burden to place on all your shoulders. Asking you to make life and death decisions as often as you do, is... “ He drew in a breath, and the next words seemed to physically pain him. “It’s too much. You’re too young to be thinking about all that.”

Pidge frowned, fingers mindlessly brushing at some imaginary space lint on her suit. “We’re at war, Shiro. We’re soldiers. Sometimes we have to be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, right?”

The words tasted funny on her tongue. Ordinarily she hated hearing that kind of ridiculous rhetoric; the idea that a soldier was just an easily replaceable tool and not a live human being. She could tell that Shiro wasn’t liking the sound of that either.

“What happened down there?” His voice was quiet again. Pidge ducked her head down slightly, just enough for the helmet to be resting on the tops of her arms. “It’s not like you to go with a last ditch move like that. You and Lance could have both gotten out fine, but instead you nearly got yourself killed.”

“Escaping wasn’t the point,” Pidge answered with a sigh. She kept her tone steady, all business and hard facts like she was talking about the weather. “We had to shut that place down and block the entrance before any more of Haggar’s experiments could break free. We needed backup. Our comms were out and Lance would’ve reached you guys faster, but for him to get out as quickly as possible I had to cover him.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Shiro nod slowly. She doubted he’d reprimand her too harshly; he had a tendency to be the one jumping in front of bullets for the rest of the team himself. Pidge was fully prepared to tell him not to throw any stones from his glass house.

“You’ve been on ground missions that have gone sideways before,” he said after a brief moment of thought.

Pidge nodded, snorting softly. “Yeah. It happens more often than I’d like.”

”But you’ve never made that kind of call before,” he said after a brief moment of thought.

The words made Pidge’s shoulders tense slightly. She hesitated. “No. I haven’t.”

“What made this time different?”

She was chewing on her lower lip again.

“Katie?”

Her fingers clenched into the fabric of her suit, hard enough to make her knuckles go white beneath the gloves.

“...Because it was Lance.”

The silence that followed her saying that must’ve meant that Shiro was surprised. She didn’t blame him for that. It surprised the hell out of her, too.

She fidgeted in place, fingers twitching. “I was… really sure we were going to end up dead if we stuck together. About eighty-three percent sure. We were surrounded, and the odds weren’t good. It felt like I’d led us down into a trap and I just…” She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to ignore the fresh sting behind her eyelids. “...I didn’t want him to die because of me.”

Shiro drew in a deep breath of his own, only to release a long, world-weary sigh a moment later. “That’s… not how it would’ve gone, I think.”

“Maybe not,” Pidge agreed softly, hiding her face from view in the space between her arms. There were tears trying to form on her lashes and she wasn’t about to let Shiro see them. “But at the time, that- that’s all I could think about. That- That the last time we’d see each other was while we die together. I didn’t want that. I wanted-- I just wanted him to _live_.”

Another pause, another stretch of thoughtful silence. Pidge didn’t dare try to open her eyes to see how Shiro was handling this information. She was pretty sure that if she did, her vision would be swimming with unshed tears. So she simply continued to hold herself, curled up and willing herself to go invisible without the help of Green or any of her equipment.

“Have you told him?”

The question earned Shiro a sudden, humorless laugh. “What would the point of _that_ be? I know it wouldn’t do anything.”

“Pidge-”

“I’ve crunched the numbers, Shiro,” she continued quickly, cutting him off. “I know the facts. The chances of him being even remotely interested are 1.639 million to one. And I already know for a fact that he’s got eyes for someone else - I heard him and Hunk talking about it a while ago - and they’re not someone I’m about to bother competing with, so- So there’s no point in saying anything.”

Voltron’s fearless leader went silent again, and Pidge chanced a look over toward him. It seemed like he felt just as lost, searching desperately for a pep talk that might work in these circumstances. Pidge already knew that there wasn’t going to be anything in his arsenal, so just sniffled quietly as she turned her gaze back out toward the stars. Not for the first time, she wished she could just be a star. Bright and untouchable. Far away from others of its own kind. Free of humanity. Free of the stupid feelings that made humans _human_.

Stupid. So stupid.

Eventually she felt his hand land on her shoulder again, this time giving her a light squeeze. It was probably the only thing he could think to do to comfort her in that moment. But even knowing that, it did seem to make Pidge feel just the tiniest bit better. At the very least, someone now understood what was wrong.

“Sorry, Shiro,” she said after another moment of silence, her voice soft again. “I didn’t mean to dump all of this on you.”

“It’s okay. I’m… sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” He squeezed her shoulder again before pulling his hand back and rising to his feet. “We should go back inside, though. Before the others really start to worry.”

Pidge nodded her head in response to that, closing her eyes and drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. She knew Shiro was right, but- She couldn't. Not yet. “I know… But just-- Can I have another minute out here alone?” 

Shiro hesitated a moment, and without looking over Pidge could tell that he was frowning ever so slightly. “...Okay. Though if you take too long, I’m coming back out to get you. Deal?”

She almost laughed at that. What did he think she was going to do out there? Disconnect her life support? Though if it meant she didn't have to face the others again - to face _Lance_ again - and continue to go about her life as if nothing was wrong... Would that be so bad?

“Deal.”

It took Shiro a bit of time to maneuver himself back into the ship, but in just another moment Pidge was once again left with time to herself, to her own thoughts. To the storm of emotions that still roiled around in her gut. In a little while she'd be able to breathe again. She'd suck it up, return to the others and apologize for her behavior. Hunk would probably squeeze the oxygen back out of her. Allura and Keith would be relieved, the latter in his own broody sort of way. Lance would probably find a way to make a joke out of it. And then they would all move on, keep fighting this war for as long as it took. In a little while, life would go on as normal.

In a little while. For now, Pidge had to turn off the comms on the exosuit, just in case it might still be broadcasting to Shiro’s.

And then she finally let herself cry.


End file.
